Gen Pés Descalços

I have to admit it. I cried, I cried a lot while watching this masterpiece of animation. The horror of the war and the apocalypse of the atomic bomb, engulfed my eyes and my soul so deep inside. It always should be remembered: the first casualty of war is innocence. Hadashi no Gen is a masterpiece, a legacy for the whole humanity. I have read many stories and talked to some survivors from the atomic bombs and I have to say that this movie is the first one that get so poignantly close to what happened on that August, 1945. The only thing I wanted to say at the end of the movie was:"I am sorry, I am sorry that I am human and that I can be so limited...I am sorry..."

Barefoot Gen is the autobiographical story of manga artist, Keiji Nakazawa and his experience during the times of the Hiroshima bombings in 1942. What ensues is something so unbelievable, so gritty, so real, it will change your life forever.

The film is adapted as an anime from Keiji's short manga series depicting all that he experienced just at the age of six when the bombings hit. His story truly is one of the most amazing things you will ever hear. Nothing else in film has ever captured the effects of the bombings in such a real and emotional way. It shows the viewers what really did happen and what we were never told. It shows us how real the bombings really were as we follow Gen through his struggle for survival during Japan's darkest hours.

If you haven't seen this film, you are missing out. While the film does not hold back on the gritty details, and what happens to the people of Japan throughout the whole of the film is very horrifying, you cannot miss this film due to these aspects. It's these things that make it so real and it would be a tragedy to ignore this film. It opened my eyes to what really went down in Hiroshima and I almost felt personally affected. During my whole time watching this film, I kept finding myself in disbelief that something like this actually occurred in our history, and recently at that. I mean, a whole society was rebuilt on the effects of the bombings and once again shows us how very, very wrong war is. One of the best films I have ever seen.

9.5/10 Hamish Kearvell A.K.A Screaming Japan Productions - www.myspace.com/screamingjapanproductions

I've basically pasted this from wikipedia, but since the autobiographical element to this story wasn't mentioned I thought I should post it. There is an interesting article with the artist here http://www.tcj.com/256/i_nakazawa.html (中沢 啓治, Keiji Nakazawa, born 1939) is a Japanese manga artist and writer.

He was born in Hiroshima, and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing.

In 1961, Nakazawa moved to Tokyo to become a full-time cartoonist, and produced short pieces for manga anthologies such as Shonen Gaho, Shonen King, and Bokura.

In 1966, following the death of his mother, Nakazawa returned to his memories of the destruction of Hiroshima and began to express them in his stories. Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain), the first of a series of five books, was a fictional story of Hiroshima survivors involved in the postwar black market. In 1972, Nakazawa chose to portray his own experience directly in the story "Ore wa Mita" ("I Saw It"), published in Monthly Shonen Jump (In 1982, the story was translated into English and published as a one-shot comic book by Educomics as "I Saw It").

Immediately after finishing "I Saw It", Nakazawa began his major work, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). This series, which eventually filled ten volumes (six volumes in English translation), was based on the same events as "I Saw It" but fictionalized, with the young Gen as a stand-in for the author. Barefoot Gen depicted the bombing and its aftermath in graphic detail, but also turned a critical eye on the militarization of Japanese society in the World War II years, and on the sometimes abusive dynamics of the traditional family. Barefoot Gen was made into an animated film, released in 1983. It was followed three years later by a sequel.

I just watched this film for the first time yesterday. I signed up for a free 1 month trial DVD delivery, and filled my queue with Anime. There is so much more than Robots and Vampires. Robots and Vampires have their place and in Anime they can often have deep meaningful stories.

This film is definitely one I will add to my collection. The subject is very important. We usually Hiroshima from an American point of view. It is important to see it from a Japanese view. the movie actually doesn't seem to make a point to say that the US was bad. I don't think an American film would be so non-judgemental.

Watch this film for it's real (and sometimes over the top) emotions.

The home life of the family and the interactions between the parents and children reminded me so much of parts of my life in South Korea for the past 12 years. though differences exist between Japan and Korea, some basics are similar. Nowadays the common life shown in the film is fading. I think it will be a good reminder of how things were.

Watch this and 'Barefoot Gen 2'.

Many compare Grave of the Fireflies with Hadashi no Gen/Barefoot Gen. While there are certainly similarities, such as the timeline taking place near the end of the war with Japan, the main difference is that Grave deals mostly with the inhumanity of the Japanese people toward their own kind, while Gen revolves less on this than it does the overall horrors of the after-effects of the nuclear blast at Hiroshima. The hooks used in the respective animes are thus, quite different. While Grave makes one shake their head and wonder about how humanity is sacrificed on the altar of survival and self-centeredness, Gen rests heavily on the outright horror that the dropping of Fat Man unleashed on an entire population.

Animation styles are vastly different also. Grave was made in conjunction with Miyazaki of studio Ghibli (Totoro), and thus was very polished in appearance. Gen, on the other hand, has a mostly "old-fashioned" anime feeling, reminiscent of the "Golden Age of Anime" in the 80's, using devices that are very manga; overblown representations of runny noses and buckets of tears from characters, for example.

In the end, Hadashi no Gen should be on the shelf of every anime collector. When someone says to them that anime is "just for kids", pop this in the VCR and show them just how in-depth, heart wrenching and thought provoking simple pen and ink cells can become. You will have to watch it twice; it's hard to get all the nuances while wiping tears from your eyes.